


In the Company of Strangers

by startwithsparks



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Implied Incest, Reunions, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwithsparks/pseuds/startwithsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Stark returns to Winterfell to find her brother Bran waiting there for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Company of Strangers

The bricks were still black with ash from where Winterfell had been burnt so many years ago, and though the walls still stood exactly as they had before, it all seemed so much smaller to her now. When she was a child, Winterfell had been the biggest thing she'd ever seen, and even the cramped walls of King's Landing hadn't diminished her memories of home. Since then she'd seen so much more of the world, walls so tall that even her brother would never have been able to climb them and soaring towers that made the old castle seem like a child's toy. Still, it was home, and though Arya Stark had been thrown in the canals of Braavos when she was still a child, her blood would always sing for the North.

The last snows of winter had all but melted away into spring, leaving glistening puddles across the courtyard and the scattered buds on fruit trees heavy with damp. Silent as a shadow, Arya made her way through the yard, blending in unnoticed with the daily comings and goings of the Stark household. It was good to see Winterfell thriving again; the only evidence that the war was more than a bad dream was the charred gray bricks that surrounded the castle. It was her sister's seat now, and though Arya had often mocked Sansa for being too much a lady, she'd proved herself as capable as any Stark before her of holding these walls together. It came as no real surprise to her, though Arya would hardly rush to say that out loud.

Sansa didn't know she was coming, no one did, but Arya had been less than a day's ride away when she felt the strange draw of familiarity calling her back home. She caught the crisp scent of the North on the breeze and a familiar whisper against her ear and, without hesitation, turned her horse and started riding towards Winterfell. Years of training taught her not to doubt those instincts when they rippled across her skin. Now that she had arrived, she kept shifting uncomfortably between feeling strikingly out of place here and feeling like she was nothing but a child again. The juxtaposition of familiarity and time spent far from these walls clashed against one another, battling for dominance inside her.

Eventually, her wandering led her to the godswood. It wasn't like her to simply stroll into the Great Hall and greet her family, it was easier to linger among the other nameless and forgotten things, and for years the only weirwood she'd seen was the door into the House of Black and White. She remembered the prayers she'd murmured years ago, the names she'd whispered into the leaves, each one eventually receiving the greatest and final gift from the gods. Perhaps it was time she thanked them.

Her steps barely made a sound on the soft earth as she slipped through the arch and made her way inside. It wasn't more than fifty feet before the thick canopy overhead started to cast shadows over her, most of the leaves on the oak trees already sprouted back, and some brittle gray blades still hanging desperately to their branches. The further in she went, the heavier the sentinels crowded, the denser the woods closed in around her. Rather than feeling the congestion, she savored the tight warmth, the smell of damp foliage, mud, and decay that surrounded her. The whisper of the heart tree continued to call out to her and she wound her way easily along the familiar path that led towards it, feeling like each step was a step back in time.

As she came to the clearing, midday sun glittering off the small pool in the center and streaking through the faint steam from the hot pools, Arya stopped dead. It wasn't altogether uncommon to find someone in the godswood back in the height of Winterfell's glory, but these recent years had seen so much less joy, and the children who were brought into the world during the cold, dark winter, were not yet old enough to leave their mother's breasts to play among the centuries-old trees. Yet there was someone here, thin and frail, hair the ruddy color of mud and a faint whisper of a beard across his jaw and upper lip. He had a book open across his legs, skinny things twisted unnaturally to the side and covered by a light gray blanket. She started at him, feeling eyes focused intensely on her even though he didn't look up from his page.

She'd heard her brothers were dead, but sometimes when she stretched herself out as far as she could, she could feel them through their wolves, through Nymeria, who still reigned as queen of the Riverlands. She didn't know if they were truly alive, however, or if their souls simply lingered within their wolves the way the Kindly Man once told her she would when she slipped her human form. Now here he was, her little brother, a man grown and seated at the foot of the heart tree as if he'd been waiting there for her all along. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in slow until she felt the warm, wet scent of wolf wash over her. Summer was chasing birds, thick black ravens, and seemed no more bothered by her presence than Bran was. _Let him play_ , she thought and started steadily forward around the edge of the pool.

Some part of her, the part that had always remained Arya Stark of Winterfell, remembered their father telling her a story about how their mother came to him in this godswood once, long ago, begging him to go South with Robert Baratheon. _It was my duty_ , she remembered him saying to her. Valar morghulis.

She was at the edge of the pool before he glanced up at her, a faint smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "You came," he said, slipping a bit of linen into his book and closing it next to him.

"I heard your whispers," she replied with a smile of her own, feeling strange standing in his presence again after so long. "I wasn't sure if it was you at first, or if you'd somehow become the wind..."

His smile slipped into a grin and he patted the bit of earth next to him. "It's taken you long enough to find your way home," he teased.

She lowered her head slightly, trying to hide a smile. When did he become such a wise old man? The last time saw him his eyes were closed and his body still, their mother fretting nervously at his side, praying to the old gods and the new that he would live, that he would wake. What happened to him in those dark days? Was it anything like the things she saw when she was shrouded in darkness, in silence, herself?

Bran's steady gaze, those endless deep pools she'd often seen in dreams, seemed to be able to read every question from her face. There was no reason to have her guard up with him, even if she thought that she could put up a wall between the two of them. Instead, she made her way around the edge of the pool, his gaze lingering on her all the while, and dropped to her knees on the ground next to him with a soft murmur of leather and steel against soft earth. She rested a hand on the pale bark of the weirwood and slowly leaned against it, moving closer until her knees brushed the side of his leg.

"I feel like you already know everything I'm going to say," she said softly.

It had been so long and all she wanted to do was ask him a million questions and tell him a million things, but the look on his face told her there was nothing she could say that he didn't already know. Everything she'd done, all the blood on her hands, he'd seen it already and yet he was still smiling sweetly at her, his hand resting softly on top of hers now.

"I do," he nodded, his smile slipping into his voice, wrapping it in warmth, in _home_.

Arya turned her hand over in his, lacing their fingers gently, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Will you run with me?" she asked, and she felt him nod faintly against her hair.


End file.
